Monthly Archives: April 2016
The Forum Creative Europe 2016
The Forum Creative Europe 2016 will take place on 25th and 26th of April in the Foundation of Ilija M. Kolarac organized by the Desk Creative Europe Serbia and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia. According to the ambitions, the Forum will overcome the importance of all previous activities of the Desk Creative Europe Serbia, and it can be said it will answer the need which was not entirely satisfied and which is of essential importance for the development of culture in Serbia.
Namely, experts from eight areas of culture (audiovisual creation, visual arts, performance arts, music, science and theory of culture and art, literature, creative industries, cultural heritage) will gather in one place, both individual ones and the ones active within public, private and civil organizations. At the working desks the experts will conduct strategic analyses and give recommendations for developing international cooperation in particular areas. The results of the work will be presented and publically debated about on the second day of the Forum and they will be published in the Desk’s publication, but most importantly – they will be used in future management of international cultural cooperation in Serbia.
The topic of international cooperation and cultural policy was expanded with the content of other programmes of the Forum (“Stati(sti)cs of cultural policy“, a display of statistical data on international cooperation and the cultural system in Serbia, presentation of international and regional cooperation of The Association NKSS, Cultural policy: perspectives of future professionals – workshop of cultural policy for the young, a video conference with organizations-partners of Kolarac on the project Kolarac Take over)
The other aim is providing information about the Creative Europe programme and domestic iternational programmes and competitions supporting cultural projects. This is the reason the following will be presented:
• Successful projects supported by the Creative Europe programme in 2015 (literary translations: Heliks, Clio, Laguna, Zavet, Dereta; projects of European cooperation: Institute of Musicology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Institute of Archeology in Belgrade and the Institute for Preservation of Cultural Monuments, Sremska Mitrovica, Kuda.org, Magnetic field B, No Borders Orchestra, Darkwood; European platforms: the Association of Belgrade Architects);
• Sub-programme MEDIA which Serbia recently joined and the sub-programme Culture: priorities, competitions and procedures (budget and administration)
• The European Prize for Cultural heritage and this year’s prize winner from Serbia, village Gostusha, Institute for Preservation of Cultural Monuments Nish
• Programmes Erasmus+, Horizon, Cosme, competitions of the Foundation Jelena Santic, A Guide through potential domestic and foreign sources of funding (Team for social inclusion and alleviating poverty).
Moreover, a series of consultations will be organized (lawyers and economists of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia), presentations and a workshop on the topic of fundraising and applying for the programmes encouraging international cooperation, mobility, audience development and creative industries (EU projects).
Cultural experts from Serbia – we expect the Forum 2016 to continue the tradition of dynamic cooperation! The admission to the Creative Europe Forum 2016 will be free of charge.
The program of the Forum is available here.
Publishing house Heliks: A journey across diverse literary landscapes of contemporary Europe
The project Trans-Europe: a Literary Journey across the Continent encompasses translation and presentation of eight novels and one collection of stories written in eight European languages (Dutch, French, German, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Turkish and Greek). It was designed with the idea of strengthening cultural bridges and literary dialogues between different coordinates in the European framework, without language boundaries and with a special emphasis on countries whose literature is less present in Serbia (primarily Island and Cyprus).
The project is composed of the following works: Jarðnæði (Oddný Eir Ævarsdóttir), Hah (Birgül Oğuz), Marilyn désossée (Isabelle Wéry), Døden kører audi (Kristian Bang Foss), Хμερολóγιο μιας απιστίας (Emilios Solomou), Jón (Ófeigur Sigurðsson), Kirschholz und alte Gefühle (Марица Бодрожић), Maud og Aud (Gunstein Bakke) and De Nederlandse maagd (Marente de Moor). All listed books brought their authors the prestigious European Union Prize for contemporary literature.
These contemporary works represent a literary response to the challenges faced by Europeans today. Another trait of all the books belonging to the project is the exquisite literary quality which is reflected in the choice of topics and the distinctive author expressions, from the experimental ones, at the cross of poetry and prose (as in the Belgian novel Marilyn désossée) to epistolary (the Icelandic title Jón) or a diary form (the other Icelandic title, Jarðnæði). Thematic links with Serbian readers are diverse but easily recognizable, such as wars on the soil of ex-Yugoslavia (the German novel Kirschholz und alte Gefühle written by the author who was born in this area, Marica Bodrožić), the Second World War (the Dutch novel De Nederlandse maagd) or a job as an illusion of modern man’s life purpose (Danish title Døden kører audi).
Experience showed that direct contact with authors is invaluable in approximating a book to the reader, thus, a guest appearance of three authors from the project was planned as a stage of promotion.
Publishing house Clio: Grail in school
The Grail in school project is based on the promotion and presentation of contemporary European literature, which is not sufficiently known to readers in Serbia. Heroes and stories written by the best European writers will help readers to learn about the diverse cultural identities that flow into one – European, and thereby perceive their own participation in it.
The main group that we are addressing is composed of young readers who are forming their reading taste. Works of the contemporary European literature are not included in the obligatory curriculum of secondary schools, and literature is taught in a traditional and often outdated manner. Our goal is to develop a competent audience that knows how to recognize good literature and high quality translation. We are planning to achieve this goal by working with the special target group of mediators who influence the formation of taste for reading of young people and the wider audience. These are university professors and high school teachers, librarians and booksellers, but also gifted and literature oriented students.
This year we selected five novels whose authors are from the Netherlands, France, Italy and the Czech Republic, and their works represent achallenge for experienced translators: De laatste ontsnapping, Jan van Mersbergen, translator Jelica Novaković-Lopušina; En attendant demain, Nathacha Appanah, translator Ljiljana Marković; Ferito a morte, Raffaele La Capria, translator Ana Srbinović; Il pianista muto, Paola Capriolo, translator Elizabet Vasiljević; Dějiny světla, Jan Němec, translator Aleksandra Korda-Petrović.
Publishing house Zavet: Contemporary European Literature: A Kaleidoscopic View
The project Contemporary European Literature: A Kaleidoscopic View includes translation into Serbian language, publication, promotion and distribution of eight books.
The books are contemporary European novels originally written in Slovenian, Swedish, Dutch, German, French and English. The authors are from six countries: Slovenia (Aleš Čar), Sweden (Sara Mannheimer), the Netherlands (Herman Koch), Germany (Iris Hanika and Friedrich Christian Delius), France (Antoine Laurain) and the United Kingdom (Sam Byers and Taiye Selasi). All these novels were written in 21st century, and published in the period from 2009 to 2013.
Although the works were created in different cultural contexts, all selected works have something in common. In each of these works the protagonists are faced with a challenge in their life, they have a need to change their lives, or the circumstances necessitate the change. With each of these challenges a reader living in Serbia can be faced too, in different circumstances and a different environment. In addition to the reader identifying in the novel the challenges faced by himself or people around him, the reader in Serbia will have the opportunity to meet other cultural contexts, to expand knowledge of social processes in the modern world.
In each of the selected works, the protagonists pursue personal happiness that eludes them from different, subjective or objective reasons. The authors of each of these works deal with topics, raise questions and suggest the messages that are universal and thus relevant to readers in other countries and other cultures. Some of the protagonists are faced with a challenge in their family, or suffer due to the disintegration of their family, some suffer due to a loss, some are burdened by historical events from the past and question their attitude toward the past, while some are in trouble because of their attitude toward life and the world which possibly results from belonging to a particular generation.
In the novel by Taiye Selasi, a family of immigrants from Africa has fallen apart, its members have moved to different parts of the world and they suffer from the lack of family relations. Will their arrival at the funeral of the suddenly deceased father of the family give them a chance to recover severed relations? In the novel by Iris Hanika, two middle-aged people are suffering because of the past, burdened by the crimes of the Nazis in Germany, and they are faced with the need to reconsider their attitude towards the past, which turns out to be a necessity of vital importance to them.
Also, in the novel by Friedrich Christian Delius, the reader follows train of thought of a retired German archaeologist who works as a tour guide in Rome. He is sitting in a church not far from the Pope himself and thinking about Italy’s ecclesiastical and political history and the concept of the original sin; he wonders, then, how Italians look to the German tourists in the light of Nazi crimes, and their thoughts finally create a portrait of present-day Italy. In the novel, which tells about four generations of one family, Aleš Čar comes to the conclusion that true happiness can only be sought in tolerance.
The protagonist of the novel by Sara Mannheimer suffers because of losing her unborn baby and begins to study obsessively the works of philosophy and literature, seeking the lost meaning of life in a library. In the novel by Antoine Laurain, quiet life of the protagonist, an accountant, is changed radically when he takes a hat which President Mitterrand accidentally forgot in a restaurant. It will turn out that this hat does not only change his life but the life of every future owner. Two couples meet in a fancy restaurant to talk about the crime that was committed by their children which disturbs what was until then a peaceful life in the novel by Herman Koch.
In the novel by Sam Byers readers are introduced to three protagonists who are members of the same generation, dissatisfied with their lives and trying to restore the former friendship hoping that will bring about a change. Is their perception of personal happiness wrong, and does it reflect the wrong attitude about personal happiness of an entire generation?
